The invention relates to facilitating a user's ability to read electronic document content on a display device such as a computer monitor.
The term “content” encompasses a wide variety of information including text, images, multimedia presentation, or any combination of them. Computer program applications are widely used to display and manipulate such content. A user of a computer system can access content that is stored locally or remotely. Computer systems generally provide a graphical user interface (GUI) that provides windows of the kind that allow applications to display content in a display pane. Tools that allow the user of a computer to move comfortably through the text of an electronic document or an image display are important and are included in various forms in GUI applications. Reading on a computer display requires eye movement. The process becomes more challenging when the reading requires following the displayed text movement if text is scrolled to reveal the previously unseen text. When the text displayed on the computer screen is scrolled, the user must follow the movement of the text to know where the reading had left off before continuing the reading of the now visible text.
A number of techniques currently exist for scrolling text. Most commonly, text is scrolled by jumping to the next screenful of text. The displayed text disappears and the new text appears. Another technique is scrolling one line at a time and thus moving text until it reaches the top of the screen. In another technique, the user drags the scrollbar. This technique becomes cumbersome when working with a large document because it increases already highly sensitive scrollbar movement. It is also possible to drag the text or the image. This typically requires a significant mouse movement as the drag often traverses most of the height of the screen. It also may introduce a problem inadvertently changing the horizontal alignment of the page any time the page is wider than the window as a hand drag tool typically drags in both the x- and the y-directions.